Going Further: Wayne shows the way for mature students

For Wayne Bateman, who is coming to the end of his second year studying Social and Political Sciences (SPS) at St Edmund’s College, attending the Going Further Summer School four years ago was a significant step in re-thinking his life plans.

Six months before he was due to sit his A-levels at a comprehensive in South Wales, Wayne (pictured above at St Edmund’s) walked out of school and refused to go back – much to the dismay of his parents. He’d been top of his class for the first few years of secondary school but his life had become more and more difficult.

“School was a very tough time for me - and looking back I’d say I was depressed from the age of 13. I was struggling to come to terms with my sexuality and I didn’t have the vocabulary to begin to talk about it. The school offered no support – and my parents were in the dark,” he says.
“It was only ten years ago but the environment was very different – especially so in a small town in South Wales.”

Now 30, Wayne is a high-achieving student and hopes to qualify as a clinical psychologist, eventually specialising in eating disorders. He had a nine-year gap away from full-time education. Having dropped out of school, he entered the workplace and developed a successful career in recruitment and consultancy.

By his mid-20s he was earning a substantial salary - but something was missing. “I increasingly had moments when I thought: is this really it? I realised that I wanted to go to university. I decided that there was only one place that it would be worth ditching my career for and that was Cambridge. So I went to one of the Cambridge Open Days and then got a place on the Going Further Summer School,” he says.

“Taking part in Going Further was vital as it showed me that Cambridge students were really diverse and the programme gave me a taste of Cambridge teaching. On the strength of that, I signed up for an intensive access course at North Hertfordshire College, as by then I was working in Stevenage.”

While on the access course, Wayne carried on working full-time by squeezing in two hours’ work before the start of the college day and six hours afterwards. “Luckily I enjoy working hard and, to be honest, I didn’t find the course at all difficult,” he says.

He has found the return to full-time education challenging at times. “My first year at Cambridge was quite hard as I was making a transition to a new environment and the second year has been tough academically.” But it’s all been worthwhile. “I love Cambridge, I love learning and I love being challenged and having my mind pushed to its limits,” he says.

The Going Further Summer School gives mature students the chance to sample life as a Cambridge undergraduate over four days – free of charge. The programme combines academic and social activities and gives participants the chance to meet Admissions Tutors and current mature students on an informal basis.

Going Further participants stay in college where they get a taste of collegiate life – and a chance to explore the university, the city and the colleges. There are four mature colleges at Cambridge: Hughes Hall, Lucy Cavendish (women only), St Edmund’s and Wolfson.

To be eligible to take part in Going Further, applicants must be considering a return to full-time higher education. They do not necessarily have to be taking an access or other pre-university course – although many are enrolled on a variety of such programmes. Each year, a number of Going Further participants make successful applicants to Cambridge.

The official deadline for this year's Going Further Summer School is Friday, 5 June. However, Cambridge Admissions Office is keen that as many potential participants as possible get the chance of a place and this summer it is willing to consider late applications.

Wayne, who is the first person in his family to go to university, says his parents are now extremely proud of him and supportive of his plans. “There seems to be a kind of process whereby you go back and do the bits of life you’ve missed out in the past. For me, being at Cambridge feels like slotting a vital bit into a jigsaw – intensively exciting and rewarding,” he says.

“To anyone thinking seriously about studying at Cambridge as a mature student, I’d say apply for the Going Further summer school and get a chance to find out whether it would suit you – it’s a brilliant opportunity.”

For details of Going Further go to: http://www.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/events/femature.html